Little Moments
by Beloved Dawn
Summary: It was to be a manly gathering. No females allowed. So what else are our favourite guys supposed to do except talk about their sweethearts?


_So I have a lot of time on my hands. Which means I really need to find a job. However, in the meantime, I will continue writing things like this. In the last week I've written this, I'm 20 pages into a new story, and I have over ten chapters of puppy written that just need to edited and put into one timeline. The problem with that story is it's four stories combined into one. So I write each branch, then have to decide what order things go in. It is coming along, though, so don't worry._

_I do not own Sailor Moon or Little Moments. Though I do suggest listening to the song. It's so sweet._

* * *

It was poker night. The guys had insisted they be allowed to have a poker night. There was to be no visiting of relatives, no parties, no dates, and no trips. It was a manly night, just the guys. A night to get away from their lovers and just be men. A night dedicated to them, with no hint of the girls around.

So every Wednesday the guys got together, played poker, had a few beers, and discussed their girls.

After all, they couldn't actually go the whole night without thinking of them, now could they?

Mamoru shook his head as he dealt the cards. "So some of the idiot girls I work with managed to convince Usako, somehow, that she isn't good enough for me. It doesn't matter what I tell her, she just goes and tries to be 'better'. Really, sometimes I just want to strangle my co-workers. Since Friday there has been no childish games, no cute pouts, no clothes on the floor or dishes left all over the place. It's driving me nuts!"

"Well, it's a short trip for you." Jadite said distractedly, looking at his cards. Mamoru just glared at him.

"Normally you complain that she _does_ those things. Now that she's not, you have a problem with it too?" Nephrite added slyly. He loved teasing Mamoru, who he had clashed with big time back in their school days.

"Let him vent. It's not like he can tell Usagi this without her crying." Zoicyte said, surprising the rest with his defence of his friend. They had expected him to join them in the teasing. Correctly interpreting their glances, he added a comment. "You all know that she's too important to him for this sort of teasing when he's having issues. Don't worry, he's not going to get out of _some_ sort of tweaking from me. Just not over this."

Kunzite and Mamoru nodded. Nephrite had the grace to look slightly chastised. Jadite was still too busy trying to decide what to do with his cards to notice.

"It's part of her charm, just like it is for Minako. As much as I hate tripping over clothes and not seeing my floor whenever she's looking for an outfit, I'd really miss it if she didn't do it. It's just one of those little idiosyncrasies she has that I love her for." Kunzite said, making Zoicyte snicker at the starry-eyed look on his face as he spoke of his beloved. Kunzite glared at the smaller man, obviously daring him to make some comment. He wasn't dumb enough to accept.

Silence fell for a hand, all the guys silently contemplating the things that make them love their respective women more with every day.

"Hey," Said Zoicyte, breaking the silence. "Did I ever tell you about the first time I heard Ami swear?"

The others stared at him as if he'd grown another head. Mamoru voiced the thought on all of their minds. "Ami swears?"

"Guess not, then." Zoicyte said, chuckling. "I'd lent her my truck. She was helping a friend move out of her dorm after university was over. She wasn't used to the feel of the clutch. It was before I replaced the disk, too. Anyway, jerked out of her control while she was backing it up. I don't remember what she hit, but you've all seen that dent in the tailgate. She swore right at the same moment she raised both feet of the pedals and stalled the truck. Then, realizing both what she'd just said and what she'd done, she clapped both hands to her mouth and went brick red. I could tell she was worried about my reaction when she looked at me. I _wanted_ to be mad, after all, she's just dented my truck. She was just so cute though that I couldn't even pretend to worry about it. After all, it's just a truck. It wasn't like anything had happened to her. Even now I'll still bring it up when she calls me on my language, and she blushes madly. It's just too incredibly adorable to believe."

"Aww." Said Jadite. "Your girlfriend blushes so easily. It's cute."

Zoicyte glared at his friend. "Mine."

Jadite laughed. "Don't worry, even if it's with one of her best friends, Rei doesn't share. Can't say I blame her. I'd never want to share either."

Nephrite snorted. "She'd flay you alive and use your skin for a war drum if you ever suggested it."

The blonde just grinned. "That's fine. She's more than enough for me."

Mamoru smiled. "I'm sure we all agree that between the five of us we somehow managed to snag the greatest girls in the world. The rest of it all is just personal taste."

"Even if the taste isn't always so great." Kunzite added cryptically. The others stared at him, wondering what he could mean. "Oh, for… Don't tell me you forgot my last birthday."

Nephrite tipped his head to the side, considering. "Minako had been spending hours practicing baking with Mako. A half hour before we were supposed to meet you called us all frantically and said the party was moved to the temple. Then you showed up two hours late with a store-bought cake."

Jadite nodded. "You never actually did tell us why. Even when you called Rei to see if she could host last minute, all you told her was 'kitchen emergency'."

"You still have your house, though, so we all figured it wasn't that bad." Zoicyte piped in.

Mamoru nodded. "It's not like Usako's never blown up the kitchen making something innocuous. It just means a lot of cleanup usually."

"Oh. I thought I had told you." Kunzite said, frowning slightly. "She didn't blow anything up, if that's what you're thinking. Though after the home-made ice cream incident, Usagi and Minako are _never _allowed in the kitchen together ever again."

"What happened with the ice cream?" Asked Zoicyte, who had been out of town for that incident.

"They blew it up." Mamoru said dryly. Zoicyte choked on the beer he was taking a drink of.

Nephrite immediately jumped up to pound him on the back, getting a good look at his hand while he was at it. After Zoicyte got his breathing under control, he turned to Mamoru. "They _what?_ How do you even _do_ that? I mean, its ice cream! As in only-two-ingredients ice cream!"

Mamoru shrugged. "Your guess is as good as ours. It was all over the kitchen. It even managed to get into the cupboards, so we had to wash all the cups and plates as well as scrub sticky goo off of the floor and walls and roof."

"Wow." Was his only comment. Really, what else is there to say to that?

"Anyway, back to Kunzite's story. I haven't heard that one, but I knew about the ice cream." Jadite said dryly.

"Ah, yes. Go ahead, Kunzite." Zoicyte said, still stunned by the previous story.

"Well, you all know that Minako was going to make me a cake. Like Nephrite said, she'd been taking lessons. She worked hard, too. The batter was really good, so I think the cake would have been too. Anyways, I had to wash the car since some pigeons had used my windshield for target practice. Then I chatted with my neighbours for a bit, since they wanted to wish me a happy birthday. However, I left rather abruptly when I heard our smoke detectors going off. I ran back inside, and there was smoke everywhere. I got to the kitchen where a half-dressed Minako was fighting to get the source of the smoke out of the oven. I ran over to help, then threw my shirt over her and sent her outside. She was coughing pretty badly, so she went out without a fight. I opened the patio doors, all the windows I could get at easily, and turned the range hood and the bathroom fans on. Then I went after the smoke detectors. All of them were ringing. Every. Single. One. Including the one in the basement. I had to take the batteries out of all of them.

"That was about the time I remembered _why_ there was a cake in the oven in the first place. There was no way we were even going to be ready for the party, which was now in less than an hour. So I called Rei. She said we could have it at her place. Then I called everyone else. I guess I forgot to mention I was going to be late, though.

"Minako was doing her best not to cry, but I could tell that she really wanted to. So I just took her in my arms and held her until she calmed down a bit. Then I told her that it was my most memorable birthday ever, for sure. She even managed a weak laugh at that. She kept apologizing. She'd wanted to look extra special for my big day, she explained, and had been getting ready but just couldn't get her hair to behave." All of the men except for Zoicyte nodded at that, having had their own experiences with girls and their hair. Zoicyte just looked smug, his girlfriend having short hair that she never really fussed over.

"So we had to wait till the smoke cleared, rinse out some clothes to wear, dry said clothes, shower, get ready, and put all the batteries back and close the doors and windows before we could leave. We grabbed a cake at the bakery on the corner. At first the guy grumbled about selling a display cake, since we should have had the sense to order ahead. He looked a little ashamed after I laughed and told him that we were two hours late to my birthday party due to the fact that our house smelled charred. We finally made it to Rei's, and you know the rest."

"Wow." Jadite said. "Well, that's a good reason. That would cause quite a delay, I suppose."

"Hmpf. You know nothing of delays." Nephrite responded, obviously impressed with Kunzite's story despite his words.

"Oh, and I suppose you're a master of them?" Mamoru said sarcastically. Everyone knew that with Usagi as his partner, he was going to be the last one at any group meeting.

"I'll bow to your experience for the title of 'master'." Nephrite shot back. "Actually, I was going to tell you a story of the time we went on a camping trip with Mako's dojo."

"Go on." Said Jadite, excited for the next story. Heartwarming as they were, he was laughing. Around his group of friends, crazy things just seemed to happen.

"Well, we offered to bring out our sea doo, since we were going to be camping on a lake. Others were bringing out boats and stuff too, but we had the only sea doo. On the last trip we'd taught some of the others to ride it as well. Everyone really enjoyed playing with it.

"Anyway, we were two hours down an unrecognizable gravel road when we realized we were lost. We didn't even know where we'd made the wrong turn. I was driving, so Mako was the navigator. Both of us were incredibly frustrated at this point. We finally found a spot near a stream that was wide enough to turn around. I insisted we get out for a bit, knowing the fresh air would help both of us out. Mako was storming around, incredibly angry with herself for misreading the map. Finally I got sick of it. I hauled her up against me and kissed her senseless. Then I took her chin and gently turned her face to see some deer that was wandered into the clearing while we were …occupied." He glared at the smirks passed around the tables.

"_Anyways,_ I told her that if she hadn't gotten us lost, we wouldn't have seen that place and that I really didn't mind being lost with her. We backtracked, but didn't find our way back to town until near dark. We spent the night at a hotel, and then made our way to the group the next day. The adults accepted our explanation, but one of the kids that I'd been teaching to ride the sea doo, who absolutely loved it, didn't. She told us point blank 'We all know what you were doing while you were 'lost'. Couldn't you have dropped the sea doo off first, _then_ gotten lost?" Needless to say, we didn't know how to respond to that. Neither did her parents. The just blushed and told her to go play with the other kids. It was hilarious looking back on it, but they were just so embarrassed."

Jadite couldn't keep it in any longer and started laughing out loud. "Alright, mister, your turn." Mamoru said, giving him a glare. "Finish the sentence. I know I love my girl because..."

"My arm goes to sleep." He said, then blushed as the others stared at him in shock. "It's really not that big of a deal. The first time it happened she was ticked off about something. I eventually gave up on following her around waiting for her to talk and went to watch TV. She threw herself down on the couch next to me shortly. She pulled her knees up and leaned against my shoulder. Eventually the arm started to go numb. I went to move it, only to discover she was asleep on me. Every time I sifted, she stirred. It wasn't a very deep sleep. So I just sat still until she finally settled down for good about an hour later. The entire time my arm was tingling and numb. It hurt, and I almost wanted to gnaw it off to stop the sensation. I didn't want to wake her, though, since she was so peaceful. Even in her half-sleep she had a small smile on her face. She looked like an angel lying there. I've never let anyone else do that. I don't think I would, either. There's no one else in the world that I love that much."

"Aww." Said Nephrite with a grin.

"Stuff it." He growled back, lacking the venom to make it a true command.

Mamoru just leaned back in his chair, a dreamy smile on his face. "I don't want a 'perfect' girl. That would be so boring. It's all of Usako's little imperfections that make me love her all the more. It's what makes her _her_. Not Rei, or Ami, or that little brat Daidoji from work. The little things."

The rest all nodded, understanding completely. "When she steals my heart again and doesn't even know it." Zoicyte voiced.

"I live for little moments like that."

* * *

_My mother and aunt have been banned from EVER working in teh kitchen together. Not that they both can't cook, and cook well, or that they don't get along, but things happen when they're together. One family reunion my mom was cooking breakfast sausages, and when my aunt came over to trade a plate of cooked ones for uncooked, the BBQ randomly started shooting flames. True story. And the embarrasing kid is me. I said that, pretty much word for word, about my cousin. The difference was, he was sixteen and gone the whole weekend. But the conversation really did happen. I hope you liked the story._


End file.
